What Is Real Life?

There are times when I undergo a crisis in faith and I wonder whether all I believe in is true. Such times prod me to ask myself, “What is real life anyways?” Is it that kind of life which includes God, the angels, heaven, and a hope of a new and better life after this one?

On the other hand, could real life be what many people often talk about and aspire for? Is it that one made up of our jobs, of finding a partner in life, of thinking about retirement and of the next entertaining thing to do?

It is so tempting to go back to what many people call as ‘real life’. It is so tempting to simplify everything and not think about the things we don’t often see with our eyes. Real life as often portrayed in the movies seems so glamorous and exciting and… tangible. It also seem so much easier.

However, when I do try to go back to this seemingly normal and real life, I couldn’t make sense of it for long. After the initial excitement and thrill, and after tasting what delights the senses, I soon see the ‘other things’ that make up this real life.

I soon see hopes shattered and thrown away. I see broken hearts. I see betrayal. I see sickness and old age and death. This is real life, too. That part of real life which many people often choose to forget as though it never existed at all. Forgetting doesn’t make all these things go away, however. It just makes us more afraid and lost later on.

It is then that I am able to reconcile what real life truly is. Real life consists of all these things, of the happy and the sad, of our hopes and of our desperation. Real life consists of both the visible and the invisible things, of those that are here, and those that are yet to come. Real life includes even my faith and of all the things I believe in, even if many people won’t allow them to be a part of their own lives.

As for me, I pray for a stronger faith, because only my faith gives me comfort to accept what real life is, with all its fleeting happiness, it’s greatest joys and it’s deepest darkest griefs. With my faith, I can continue to hope, that even when real life includes hurts and diseases and death, all these things are not yet the end. My hope allows me to hold on firmly to my belief that God has a real remedy for all the sufferings that I now see, creating joy out of our sorrows and love out of our greatest fears.

“If God does not exist, then life is futile. If God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity. It seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness.” -William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith

One Comment

Nice article Joyce. I often look at it that life is God and God is the life. In Him we all have real life. It’s good that we can continue to hope in Him, hope for the life beyond. Hope is not subject to the law and neither does it make us ashamed to keep on hoping in God.

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